


Give us the tools, and we will finish the job

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Night Watch - Sarah Waters
Genre: 1990s, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 21:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7286149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the fiftieth anniversary of VE Day, 84-year-old Kay Langrish is asked to speak to an assembly hall full of schoolchildren about her experiences in the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give us the tools, and we will finish the job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gorseflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorseflower/gifts).



> The title comes from a 1941 radio broadcast by Churchill.
> 
> Dear gorseflower - I loved your prompt about Kay "in 10 or 20 years or even closer to the present". Really hope you enjoy!

Everything about the school is modern; it even has that new-car sort of smell, acridly false, nothing at all like the ancient wood and stone of the boarding school where she spent most of her own childhood. Kay's soles squeak on the lino as she follows the headmistress down the corridor to the assembly hall, past felt display boards filled with war poems in clumsy teenage handwriting. She wishes she could stop and read some, see how well the fourteen-year-olds of 1995 have understood the things that happened half a century ago. Sort of hopes they don't get it at all, because why should they? How could they? The hot stink of blood and crashing rubble isn't something one can teach in a classroom, after all, and with any luck none of these kids will ever have to find out what it's like in person.

"Let me help you," Mrs Chowdhury offers, holding out her hand when they reach the steps to the stage, but Kay declines as politely as possible and makes her own way up, slow and careful, leaning on the carved ebony cane Viv gave her for her eightieth birthday. Can't help, as always, remembering back across the stretch of the years to the first gift Viv ever bought her - a weak, vaguely stale-tasting cup of tea in a cafe near the cinema - and then the car she'd bought Viv for her thirtieth a few years later. How she'd stared at it, pretty lipsticked mouth hanging open, and how Kay had stared at Viv in turn. How the realisation had been as sudden and striking as a lightning bolt: _I love her_. The second realisation, like the low rumble of thunder: _You can love someone_ this much _without wanting to take her to bed? I didn't know that was possible._

Eighty-four now, still alive, still walking, still talking - but she's glad for the chair when she reaches it, a plushly padded navy thing she recognises from the waiting area in reception on her way in. There's a microphone stand there, a little table with a glass of water, and spreading out from the stage to the back of the room a sea of empty chairs and benches waiting to be filled. Soon she can hear the rumble of several hundred voices rushing closer like a wave, the tap and clatter of feet as the kids start to make their way into the hall.

"Quiet, please," one of the teachers says. Kay can't hold back a smile at that: what the fellow really ought to have asked for was _silence_ , because the kids are still chattering, just in sibilant whispers now. It's a curiously pleasant sound, like something natural; like wind rustling leaves. The sight of all those rows of faces turned up to her is rather less pleasant. It's been a whole decade since Viv's granddaughter first asked Kay to speak in the school where she taught to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of VE Day, and she's still never quite managed to keep her nerves in check. Strange, really, and a little bit silly, she always thinks, after everything she's seen.

"Good morning, everyone," the headmistress says, and waits for the dragged-out drawled chorus of _good-morning-Mrs-Chowdhury_ in return. "I'd like to introduce our very special guest today, Miss Langrish. Fifty years ago Miss Langrish drove an ambulance during the war." There's a smattering of semi-interested murmurs, quickly shushed by the teachers lining the walls on either side of the hall in their uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs, and Mrs Chowdhury gives Kay a reassuring sort of smile. "Over to you."

"Thank you." She considers getting up, but hates the growing tendency to wobble on her feet; besides, whoever set up the stage has already anticipated that and tightened the microphone stand on a level with the chair. "My name is Kay, and yes, I drove ambulances during the Blitz and throughout the rest of the war."

She pauses after that. She never likes to speak from a script, stilted and learned by rote the way she used to have to learn Tennyson and Molière as a schoolgirl; instead she prefers to take a moment to study the students, gauge their interest levels, and speak from the heart - her huge, battered heart, many times broken, many times inexpertly but carefully, tenderly patched.

"I wonder how many of you have been in love," she says, and dares the teachers with a coolly amused stare to shush the children this time when their voices raise again in a curious, excitable muddle of whispers.


End file.
